I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

An example from my book you just didn't understand that it's often quoted driving at a car

and she says, you thirsty would you like to stop for a drink and he isn't so he says, no.

But then it turns out she actually had wanted to stop and so they're both frustrated.

She because she wanted to stop and didn't and he didn't then he because he thinks,

why are you playing games with me? Why don't you just tell me?

That's Deborah Tannen, quoting from her hugely influential book, you just don't understand.

Which is about how we all have what she calls conversational styles that often make it hard to understand each other.

In this conversation we try pretty hard to match our styles and later she tells me about her new book,

Finding My Father, in which she struggles to understand a complex man who is deeply influential in her life and work.

I am so glad to be talking to you today, this makes me really happy because you're like the expert on all this stuff this whole podcast is about.

Thank you so much, what a thrill to talk to you, thank you.

The idea of conversational style is really your contribution, isn't it?

Yes, yes. As a sociolinguist, so a linguist who studies social interaction.

The idea that people have different ways of speaking, I call it conversational style.

If you talk to someone, his conversational style is similar.

The chance is that they will understand how you meant what you said are pretty good,

that you'll understand how they meant what they said are pretty good.

But when conversational styles are different, then all that is called into question.

So yeah, and the implications of that for different ethnic groups, gender of course the one I'm best known for at work, personal life, public life.

So, and when I am my book about women and men, you just didn't understand, I make the point that everything we say has these two levels.

Does it create connection or does it put someone maybe one up or one down with respect to the other and those two levels are always there.

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